


Scape and Scale

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: EDIT: I’m adding crow-glint tags because while this predates season of the hunt it’s relevant, Edit: THIS HAS BEEN BETA'D, Exposition, Gen, I was fucked up about him before the Amnestia s2 tab, Post-Game: Destiny 2: Forsaken DLC, Very frank murder discussions, also I should be writing an essay but I did this for a few hours instead, just that and dialogue, lemme befriend newdren bungo, now that + a talk in a discord gave me feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22822021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which an opportunity for amends opens up.
Relationships: Ghost & Guardian (Destiny), Guardian & Crow (Destiny), Guardian & Uldren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Scape and Scale

**Author's Note:**

> AS OF SEPTEMBER THERE HAVE BEEN UPDATES, SO PLEASE GO THANK/READ [ WayfaringPangolin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WayfaringPangolin) WHO HELPED EDIT THIS

Someone who knew him before finds him at last.

He’d stowed away in an aid shipment to Earth and lived on the outskirts of the farm it'd been flown to. His Ghost had insisted that they needed to go to the Traveler, but he couldn’t bear to be any closer. He couldn’t bear to leave just yet, either – not without some catalyst greater than confusing distrust.

So he waited in limbo, until one day when a ship shaped like a butterfly circled the farm and an almost familiar face exited. He wants to scrabble for his helmet while they make their rounds, but he might as well have been rendered paralyzed. *

His ghost seemed to recognize them: the Guardian in richly-coloured armour and the Ghost in a bright shell. He speaks in a chirping bright tone about heroism and saviours and righteous vengeance; their titles of ‘kingslayer’ and ‘young wolf’ stick in his head more than the others. He itches to jam his helmet back on, but it’s been broken for a while now, and the gunsmith has been slow with repairs, so all he can do is hide a bit further under his white sheet.

The movement catches their eye. They leave the conversation they’re in with a polite nod and wave, then begin stalking towards him (he wonders if this why ‘wolf’ seems to fit them so well). He doesn’t move; not even when they reach the shaded border of his little encampment. They sigh, and begin speaking in an awful, unused voice that makes even their own Ghost startle a bit.

“We should talk. I won’t stop you if you want to go. If you don't want to hear it though. What I have to say might hurt.”

He still doesn’t move. He feels bitter that this is what his waiting has brought him: this shimmering stranger, this struggling monotone with no certainty in their sentences. He forces most of it back down.

“Out here everything hurts, better to get on with it than drag it out.”

They gesture to their Ghost and he transmats all their weapons away, disappearing in a shimmer of sparks right after. They jump up to the wide shell of a crate he’s been sitting on today and fold their legs beneath them, one hand pinned below it all. It's a display, calculated to hinder them, and it makes him uneasy.

“I knew you, in your first life. We’re- Guardians are not meant to seek out information about our own pasts. But for you. It’s more...pressing for you.”

The sun is setting, and his eyes brighten with the changing light. The farm is quiet but their voices do not carry. ”Were we friends?” The answer is no – he knows that much already, but he can’t think of any other reason for them to be here. “Did you know me well?”

They gaze upwards, looking away from the conversation. Still they carry on in that same unused rasp. “I didn’t know you very well. You were… loyal. Brave. You loved your sister and your people, and you were so loyal to her that you killed a Guardian – someone important to all of us, but especially to me. You were so loyal that you raised an army for a memory, you killed people; killed my friend. So I killed you.”

He’s not surprised that they don’t talk much, if this is the sort of thing they say when they do. His Ghost is orbiting his head, and he can feel him preparing to defend his Guardian’s good name (even through the obstacle of not having actually chosen a name yet) to the very hero he’d just been gushing over. Before his Ghost can speak up, however, they continue.

“We had met before that - the end. A few times. First was almost as soon as I was alive again – brought back – like you are now. You were a – <i>the</i> prince, and your sister was the Awoken queen, Mara Sov. You used to be called Uldren. You lived in the Reef, and the Dreaming City, as far as I know. You hated me; right from the start you hated all of us - all Guardians. I didn’t care about you, or the fact that you hated me, back then. You were loyal and quick in a fight, and I respected that."

“Then you lost your sister in a battle; it’s all history – complicated history – now. You crashed on Mars – your old ship’s still there, if you want it – and eventually got arrested by the regent. Your sister survived the battle; she had a scheme, but she wasn’t back yet.  
You got cursed. Hive gods. Wish dragon. Fallen that turned into something else for you – a whole collection of them, led by Barons. The group of you took over the reef- regent didn’t like that much. Helped kill my friend first so I hunted them down first. The regent- she's named Petra, she helped. Was friends with the one you killed too - both of them ran the whole prison that everyone broke out of.  
I killed the Baron's first, and one's death didn't take properly so every month I go kill him again. Still won't stay dead. I killed this monster that ate you – it was a tool of the curse – it spat you out still alive. So I killed you. Killed the dragon that cursed you, then doing that cursed a whole city."

"Didn’t know you were alive again- wasn’t really the you I'm talking to that did those things, but it was still you I killed. It wouldn’t have been right, not to talk.”

They nod like any of this has made sense, like he isn’t pulling his Ghost for references as they speak. They sit beside him quietly, all folded up, while he quickly runs through almost the last decade of events. He has a name now, and he almost likes how it fits (the first more than the surname, but he doesn’t say that out loud). He’s got his first death and a history, and his murderer sitting beside him. He has Pulled Pork find records of their first missions, searching for their strange overlap.

The Black Garden mentions Reef assistance, and later, its call for aid in dealing with a rogue faction. The Battle of Saturn; that’s where the Queen was lost, and him-Uldren-he – whoever it was – would have fallen to the wayside. That particular thread leads to a neat history file: a lost battle for Earth's moon, a beloved Guardian felled. A revenge plot against the demigod that killed her, doomed to fail. Notes on how the one sitting next time him later succeeded in killing him. Then this god-king of a father, heard of his son's demise, came here for revenge; he killed the Queen – his sister? Mara? – and the majority of the Awoken fleet. He’d brought blighted shadows to this system, and would have destroyed it entirely, at least, if not for the person sitting next to him. 

So they’d just killed that god too. He steals a sneaky glance over; the moon has long since risen, and they’re sitting just the same as when they started. He searches for more information; when he can’t find a detail he wants in the Vanguard network, its promising files locked, they pass over their codes and point him towards the more useful information twice over. 

Uldren (who still might back out on that name, but is pleased to have something to think of himself by) understands why they might not talk very much a little better now. He’s always known that the world was strange, overly large and hostile. Naivety is his Ghost’s sin alone. The breadth of the issue – and the fact that the only two friendly people he’s met in this life are the ones who put him here – are new, however.

The stars are all out and unfamiliar still. He knows now that it’s because he once lived under a different sky. The moon is at its apex, but he’s never needed much light to see. He wonders briefly if they’re the same way. Uldren brushes his own Ghost reassuringly, encouraging him in that subliminal way to seek out theirs, he'd left earlier. He doesn’t ever want to be alone, but this person has to be familiar in some way – and besides, he needs to process. He flops back on the cold metal and stares at the sky. The clear night clouds over and reopens before they speak again. 

“I can’t apologize. I would, if you truly wanted that, if it would help. But you were dangerous, soon you’ll be dangerous again.” Their voice carries a note of approval at the thought of that particular future, and he really isn’t sure how to feel about it. “There was no right way out. It wasn’t right, but there was no answer that didn’t end up with more corpses on the pile.”

He makes an effort to turn his head, almost paralyzed again. They don’t look at him.

“You’re back, it's a fresh chance. Who knows what we were the first time around- well some of us do. You. Anastasia. Cayde – my friend – almost did. Some few who kept journals in their first lives, some few who died and got back up right away. You’re not alone in knowing, you’re just rare. This is a second chance – if you want it."

He can’t help but scoff. “Hardly. Even before my past self ‘raised an army and killed’ as you so _charmingly_ put it I seem to have been a public figure. My past will keep lingering over me; and since we all appear to be immortal - not to mention capable of some astoundingly long grudges. I will have an eternity here to pay for the crimes of a man I can’t remember.”

“You could go back to the Awoken,” they interject. “Queen’s tricky, clever and greedy. Has servants who’d move the stars for her. She probably has a way to give you memories. Even if she doesn’t, she’d know more about you than I do.”

“On what ship? I don’t exactly have much if that’s not already plainly apparent. You said that mine was crashed on Mars.”

“Could dig it up for you, if you wanted – or I could take you there. Or I could give you a new ship and you could fly there yourself since piloting seems to get passed down alright.”

He wants to snap at them, to push them off his crate. He doesn’t understand – he wants to run from this trap. He wants to know who in their right mind decided that this maudlin thing was their greatest hero (also, he wants a ship). Uldren doesn’t say any of that, so they carry on.

“Could take you to other places if you don’t want to meet with her now – the Shore, maybe? You could find you remaining Barons and Scorn and try to take over again. There’s plenty of distant planets to hide on if you want to; or, you could just take the ship and run. It’s a big galaxy, and you’ve got an awful lot of time on your hands to explore it, if that’s what you’d like.”

Exploration and his own ship and the freedom to tell no one anything sound very appealing. He suspects that wanderlust is the only reason he’s held up under the isolation at all. He could vanish for years – figure out what time means to an immortal. Conquering doesn’t truly appeal to him: he doesn’t want to rule. And besides, the neutrality of the suggestion, the fact that they’d just blandly considered it and offered it up annoyed him – or disturbed him. In all honesty, the two might be one and the same, at least in their case. However, there’s something bitten off the end of their already choppy paragraphs. He still wants more answers, and they owe him at least that much.

“Or?”

They hesitate, “Or you could stay here I suppose-”

“That wasn’t it. Say what you meant to say since you had to have this talk in the first place.”

His demand is sharp, and their responding nod is slow enough that he feels fear; and he hates the fear that he has offended them and now will never hear their answer. For some reason he can’t stand the thought of secrets – he thinks he’d take honesty over that ship.

“You could come with me to the Last City, to the Traveler,” they finally say. “What your Ghost asked you to do. It wouldn’t be easy – grudges are still fresh, even by mortal standards. My word is worth something with the Vanguard, and I’d help you. To acclimate or to leave, or even just to find it. There, there should be a place for anyone willing, for everyone. If not, it’s not the kind of city I was meant to help build. I’ll help you now, if you want, or if you want to be left alone right now and change your mind later, call me and I’ll help then too.”

He reads between the lines of their statement and their history. They’re young – new by anyone’s standards, but especially so from what he’s learned about typical Guardian timescales. Every other person of some import that he’s read about has a minimum of centuries under their belt – not a handful of rushed years. And yet, their titles stretch as long as his forearm. He’s staring at an idiot with a hero complex who’s willing to pin their wavering standing on what seems whim.   
It’d be reckless, and hard, and painful. But he hadn’t done anything like this in his past life; and besides – there was never going to be a kind way out. Uldren (whose name is a burden with weight such that it makes him want something different, but he doesn’t change it, he can’t find it within himself to hide now) sighs.

“To your city then. I hope it’s more impressive than all this.”

**Author's Note:**

> Do I use a more specific guardian for the young wolf or do I just keep it ambiguous and will I ever sort out of which of my oc's I want to be The Main One anyways?
> 
> Edit: never figured that out but I did write an au/sequel to it [ Scope and Scourge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24940633)


End file.
